Todd Day said...
|
|I used to run with open lists. Got burned by spammers. Now I have to deal
|with tracking down these unsubscribe (and address change) cases myself.
|That's why you'll find list managers bitter over crap caused by these email
|spammers. You go out of your way to do a service for the net to pay back
|the institution that has given you so much, and some johnny-come-lately
|appears and screws it all up for you - making you into the computer
|security nazi you always loathed as an undergraduate.
Actually, I loathe the spammers as much as anyone. My only point
is that there are actually legitimate reasons for an outsider to
run a lists command. I contend that doing that is not a wrong,
illegal, sinful, immoral or fattening act in and of itself. It's
why you do it and what you do with it that determines this. And
I would have no problem with first time spammers being put in the
stocks, publicly, for a week or so, on a diet of bread and water.
Further acts of spam should be subject to much, much stiffer
penalties. And if anyone cares, obnoxious telephone solicitors
would receive the same fate If I Ran The Justice System (polite
ones who accept your "no", don't call at dinnertime, and don't
call back would go free).
|[Warning, strong opinions ahead]
|
|Personally, I've always considered .sigs to be the appendix of the
|electronic letter body - perhaps useful early in its evolution, but
|completely useless today (possibly poisonous :-) I mean, if I want your
|address or phone number, I'll just email you for it.
Well, an email address is sometimes useful, because there are *still*
mailers and gateways and list software and whatnot that mangle the
return addresses. And a phone number/address can be handy if someone
is on a link thet gets mail infrequently, or doesn't sit in front of
a screen with a mail app or biff running all the time.
|Or, hey, I don't
|think I've ever seen *that* clever quote from (insert science fiction film
|or book or tv series) in all my ten years of reading USENET! Hell, one of
|my workmates still uses that "To err is human... to really screw things up
|requires a computer" quote in his .sig. Even the cheez gift industry
|stopped using that one - the last coffee mug I saw with that quote actually
|used greenbar paper with the font found at the bottom of checks!
And herein lies the real use of .sigs - they tell you something
about the person. Your workmate, for instance, either has a
severely devolved sense of humor, or really doesn't "get" computers.
(Or maybe it's caraso, and that's just newbie bait.)
-Miles, no .sig most of the time